9/11 Wine: Tackiest Novelty Edible Yet?

“Hey, it’s almost September 11! Got any cool drinks picked out for the big party?”

“Yeah, bro—how about some amazing 9/11 Memorial Commemorative Merlot? Or maybe some 9/11 Memorial Commemorative Chardonnay? That more your speed?”

This conversation can now be a reality, thanks to the Long Island-based winery Lieb Family Cellars and their perfectly timed (or should that be “extra-poorly timed”?) release of a wine that will give a small (6 to 10 percent of proceeds) cut to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

9/11 Memorial Wine (which, thankfully, does not feature exploding buildings on the packaging or come in a two-pack of rectangular boxes) is, of course, just one of many hideously tacky foods to latch on to current events as a selling point.

Who can forget:

Osama Bin Laden Kulfa Balls? This coconut candy made in Pakistan and enjoyed in China demonstrated that while coconut is beloved around the world, a sense of humor varies greatly from zip code to zip code.

Or the Bill Clinton corkscrew, wherein the spirally First Dong does the, uh, job at hand? At least this particular novelty doesn’t trade on thousands of innocent deaths, give or take a few depending on how you stand on the whole Clinton body count thing.

Or, of course, Stalin soda? Arguably a tougher call: Sure, Stalin killed millions with state-engineered famines and hundreds of thousands through brutal political repression in general and the gulag specifically, but he did, ultimately, order millions of his countrymen to their deaths to stop Hitler’s conquest of Russia…after originally teaming up with Hitler and splitting up Poland.